[2008] ASP.NET / ASP thoughts on capturing partial form data

I have a client who I have done some webform stuff for. They are all simple data entry forms, one of them is in ASP.NET and is a 4 part form, and the rest are in traditional ASP and are single page forms. They are your standard fill out, click button, emails to the client.

I mostly do WinForm client app development, so sometimes my web stuff is a bit rusty.

The client is asking me to be able to capture the data even when the customer does not fill out the entire form. They at least want to be able to capture the first couple of fields, which is the customer contact information. Some of the forms are long, and they feel people may give up on entering them, but they could possibly do follow ups in person/on the phone if they have contact info.

So this seems a bit tricky without implementing some sort of AJAX type solution to be recording the data basically as it is being typed, or as focus is lost from a given control. I am trying to implement this quickly, so I don't know if trying to work in some AJAX to the page (especially in the traditional ASP pages) will be something worth tackling.

One thought is to (on the traditional ASP forms) seperate them to 2 pages instead of 1, and collect contact info in the first, and all the mundane details in the second, so as long as they have clicked through to the second page, we will have enough info.

The real issue then comes from, how to transport the data over. What is the best way to determine that a user did not complete a form, versus that they did complete a form? I feel as though it will mean logging the "first page" of data to some persistant storage, so that at some point, I can compare to the data that was filled out to completion, and only send them emails for the partial completes (ie the ones they didn't get via the mechanisms already in place).

Any thoughts on this? I am looking to implement it for Monday, so I am trying to keep the solution somewhat simple.

Sounds like a perfect job for the ASP.NET Wizard control. 1 Page, capture data in steps, complete control over how/when the user can navigate through each step.

That would mean a total redesign of the pages though I would imagine right?

Kleinma,

I have been working with web forms for a bit now...just a few thoughts.

On your second point with regards to when to send an email about a partial form while keeping the pages you have already developed. What about counting the number of empty fields on the page and if it exceeds a certain number, an email is triggered. I.e. If the form is left with 5 empty fields then send the email if 1 or 2 no email. Just a thought

As for saving to the db as the user moves from field to field the only concern I would have with saving each time they user moves is, what happens if they move back to a previous field to change something?

I would think your best bet is to make it 2 pages as you suggested. First page is name and contact info, second has the remainder.

Just my .02

The problem as I described it to the client is that there is really no way to say "the user closed the browser" when they were half way through filling out the form. I mean yes there are ways, but they are all cumbersome and require a decent amount of rework to the site.

As it stands now, I am just going to use at least a 2 page form approach, and when they go from form 1 to form 2, I am going to fire off an email with form1s info, and add some additonal information to the email so they know it is only a partial post of the data, and if the user completes the form, the rest will follow in a second email.

Place the questions on various steps of a wizard or on separate ASP.NET pages. It'll obviously be filling out the data in the tables but you don't know when they fill in the rest - you could set a limit of 1 hour and have a scheduled task that starts a console app that runs through the table looking for >1 hour form data.

I could.. but I was really looking for a shim here versus recreating everything.

This client "claims" that they used to get emailed with data from the forms no matter what... but I don't believe them because they were simple HTML forms submitting to a form mailer perl script.... nothing more. So for them to tell me the user could fill out one field, close the browser, and that data got emailed to them doesn't make much sense...


In the end, I ended up seperating out contact info to the first part of each form, and when they submit that, it emails the contact info to the client. then as they complete the "meat" of the form and submit that, all the data gets emailed.

It isn't perfect.. but it works and I was able to do it without too much modification of what was already there.